ISO the Goldilocks Principle On Feeding Substack Readers

How much is just right?

Note: a previous version of this was written and scheduled before I stopped charging for my newsletters. It’s been corrected below. Sorry! Teri

The Goldilocks Principle, roughly stated is we can have too much, too little, or just the right amount of something. That authoritative source Wikipedia says, “In communication, the Goldilocks principle describes the amount, type, and detail of communication necessary in a system to maximise effectiveness while minimising redundancy and excessive scope on the ‘too much’ side and avoiding incomplete or inaccurate communication on the ‘too little’ side.”

In case you’ve forgotten, here’s the story that birthed the principle.

Three Bears, a mama, papa, and baby bear, lived in a house in the forest. They had three dishes of porridge, three chairs, and three beds. They were going to eat their breakfast of porridge BUT it was too hot so they took a little walk around the block while it cooled. Unfortunately, they didn’t lock their door.

Goldilocks, long on beauty and short on common sense, stopped by while they were walking and the stupid little girl went inside the house. She quickly saw that it was uninhabited at the time but had some steaming porridge, three chairs, and three beds. So she said under her breath to her bad little self, “Finders keepers, bitches.” And went for the big bowl.

Well, Papa’s porridge was too hot, Mama’s too cold. But the temperature of the porridge in Baby’s cute little bowl was just right. So she ate the whole thing standing up before looking for a chair. She tried Papa’s chair and man, it was hard. Mama’s chair wasn’t right either.

“Surely this cute little chair will be right,” she concluded and plopped down, breaking the chair and landing on her tail bone on the floor. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you what she said next.

Goldilocks was so traumatized and woozy that she decided she needed to lie down but saw that there were three from which to choose. One, Papa’s, was too hard and another, Mama’s, was too soft. Oh, but there was a tiny little one that fit her just right. So, she closed her eyes and fell right asleep.

By this time, the three bears were hungry and figured their porridge should have cooled so they came back to the house. When they saw that someone had eaten out of their bowls they huffed. “Who would do such a thing? Do they know who we are?”

“Waaaah,” wailed Baby. He didn’t care that he got no respect. He did care that there wasn’t even a congealed drip of porridge left in the bottom of his bowl. Goldilocks had not only eaten it all, bear-like she’d licked both inside and outside of his bowl clean.

“Someone’s eaten mine all up!” And then he noticed his chair in pieces. “Waaaah! They broke my dang chair too!”

With that, three beady-eyed bears swept their heads from one side of the room to the other. It looked for all intents and purposes like Led Zepplin had stayed there. The place was trashed. Not only was Baby’s chair broken, but Papa’s bed was messed up, Mama’s bed was messed up, and Baby’s bed was too. Except it had lumps still in it and worse, blond curls spilling across the pillow. Well, their reaction wasn’t pretty and wasn’t quiet. They roared, waking Goldilocks, who jumped out an open window by the bed and made tracks to avoid being mauled or worse.

Though it’s not part of the story, lessons were learned all the way around. I’ll double-dang-guarantee you that from then on Goldilocks never went into an empty house without an invite and the bears? For sure they started locking their doors when they were taking a walk. Sometimes learning a lesson is not so much fun. That’s why I prefer to think ahead and avoid such scenes if at all possible.

Thus, the questions. Metaphorically speaking, if I’m communicating too seldom or too much I don’t want anyone wreaking havoc with me or my house, unsubscribing to Teri’s Doing It! because I misjudged your interest in hearing from me. I’ve recently reduced my newsletters down to 4 a month. Do you want more, less? What?

Save me, save us. Let’s abide by the Goldilocks Principle, shall we? Tell me: how often shall I feed you?

Thank you. It’s not science, but that’s ok. I’m no scientist. I’m a story teller.